The Daily Stoic - The $17 MILLION Test of Integrity | John Amaechi (PT. 1)

Episode Date: October 1, 2025

How much is your word worth? For former NBA player turned psychologist John Amaechi, the answer is $17 million. In this episode, John and Ryan unpack why he walked away from that payday, why integrity is his ultimate non-negotiable, why your job should never define you, and more. John Amaechi is an English psychologist, consultant and former professional basketball player. He played college basketball for the Vanderbilt Commodores and Penn State Nittany Lions, and professional basketball in the NBA for the Orlando Magic, Utah Jazz, and Cleveland Cavaliers. Since retiring from basketball, John got his PhD in psychology and has worked as a psychologist and consultant, establishing his company Amaechi Performance Systems.Follow John on X @JohnAmaechi and on Instagram @JohnAmaechiOBE 📚 Grab a signed copy of It’s Not Magic by John Amaechi at The Painted Porch | https://www.thepaintedporch.com/🎙️ Listen to Ryan's solo episode You Are What You Won't Do For Money on Apple Podcasts and Spotify📖 Preorder the final book in Ryan Holiday's The Stoic Virtues Series: "Wisdom Takes Work": https://store.dailystoic.com/pages/wisdom-takes-work👉 Support the podcast and go deeper into Stoicism by subscribing to The Daily Stoic Premium - unlock ad-free listening, early access, and bonus content: https://dailystoic.supercast.com/🎙️ Follow The Daily Stoic Podcast on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast🎥 Watch top moments from The Daily Stoic Podcast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@dailystoicpodcast✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Get Stoic inspired books, medallions, and prints to remember these lessons at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/📱 Follow us:  Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Look, ads are annoying. They are to be avoided, if at all possible. I understand as a content creator why they need to exist. That's why I don't begrudge them when they appear on the shows that I listen to. But again, as a person who has to pay a podcast producer and has to pay for equipment and for the studio and the building that the studio is in, it's a lot to keep something like The Daily Stoic going. So if you want to support a show, but not listen to ads. Well, we have partnered with Supercast to bring you a ad-free version of Daily Stoic.

We're calling it Daily Stoic Premium. And with Premium, you can listen to every episode of the Daily Stoic podcast, completely ad-free. No interruptions, just the ideas, just the messages, just the conversations you came here for. And you can also get early access to episodes before they're available to the public. And we're going to have a bunch of exclusive

bonus content and extended interviews in there just for Daily Stoic Premium members as well. If you want to remove distractions, go deeper into Stoicism and support the work we do here. Well, it takes less than a minute to sign up for Daily Stoic Premium, and we are offering a limited time discount of 20% off your first year. Just go to dailystoic.com slash premium to sign up right now or click the link in the show of descriptions to make those ads go away. Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, a short passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength and insight here in everyday life. And on Wednesdays, we talk to some of our fellow students

of ancient philosophy, well-known and obscure, fascinating and powerful. With them, we discuss the strategies and habits that have helped them become who they are and also to find peace and wisdom in their lives. Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. A couple of years ago, I had Matthew McConaughey on the podcast, and he was telling the story about turning down somewhere north of $10 million to be in another romantic comedy. He wanted to take his career in another direction. I'm fascinated with people who sort of bet on themselves in that way,

or people who, because of their principles, decide that it really doesn't matter how much money you throw at them, they're not interested. Actually, we just did a podcast episode about this the other day. I wrote this piece called You Are What You Won't Do for Money. And I was talking about that very idea. Here's a little piece of it. A couple months ago, I got this email. Now, it was a sales pitch, so I take it with a grain assault.

But according to what the person was claiming, whose name I will leave off and company I will leave off, I have a seven-figure opportunity sitting in front of me. And I'm an idiot if I don't. see that or take advantage of it. Basically, all I would have to do would be to partner with this supplement maker and we could make a line of supplements with the Daily Stoic brand. The supplements they were saying could be about calm and clarity and resilience. And they said the brand could easily make several million dollars. And they mentioned a handful of people who have done very

similar plays. And unlike the stuff we do at Daily Stoic, I wouldn't have to do the procurement or the production or the design of the fulfillment. Basically, it's just a licensing and a platform play. Now, there's only one problem here, which is that I just don't want to do it. It doesn't interest me, like, at all. And it's not that I'm, like, opposed to supplements or vitamins. I took some this morning. We've advertised a bunch of them here on Daily Stoic and The Daily Dad over the years.

if you listened my state of the show episode, I talk about how I think about which advertisers we take on, and there's a bunch of things I won't do. I won't do gambling. I won't do CBT stuff. I don't do things that are obviously scams. But I don't think there's anything wrong with supplements. And like I said, I not only take some, I think that they work.

And I don't think there's anything wrong with making money or being in business. In fact, when I had Robert Rosencran's on the podcast, he talked about stoicism and capitalism, and he said, I'm a stoic capitalist because I write books and sell them to people. And you know, Seneca talked about this 2,000 years ago. He says, no one has condemned wisdom to poverty. He said, the philosopher shall have considerable wealth, but it will not been pride from any man's hands. It will not be stained by anyone's blood. Now, Seneca doesn't really live up to this himself. I mean, he makes a lot of money while he works for Nero. But I like the sentiment, right? Like, it's fine to make money as long as you're making money honestly and not

exploitatively and that you're not hurting anyone in the process. There's a lot of things we don't do for Daily Stock. I don't really do T-shirts. I don't do stickers. I don't do like a lot of the things where people just slap their name on something and sell it. Usually, through some third-party company, don't really sell hats. It doesn't feel right. More importantly, it doesn't get me excited. It's not like why I built the Daily Stoic or what I think the platform should be for. And so as long as I'm in charge, which is, I don't really see any reason why I wouldn't be having taken on outside investors. I don't have a boss. Not going anywhere. As long as I'm around and I'm in charge, that's not how I want to use the platform. Well, my guest today turned down

$17 million because he felt like it conflicted with his loyalty and he felt like he'd given his word to someone. I'm talking about John Amaci. He's an NBA player, a psychologist, and a fascinating all-around human being who has had a journey unlike many others. He didn't even get into basketball until late in high school. He moved to America to play. He was sort of a journeyman NBA player. He was one of the first professional athletes to come out publicly as gay. And in this episode, we talk about how you make your dreams happen, what it means to be a principled person. We talk actually a fair amount of stoicism in this episode.

I thought it was a great conversation. I really enjoyed having it. As I said, John is an English psychologist, a consultant, former professional basketball player. He played at Vanderbilt and at Penn State. He had a professional career in the NBA. And then after he retired from the NBA, got his Ph.D. in psychology. He wrote a memoir called Man in the Middle.

He now has a leadership book called It's Not Magic. He signed a few copies of It's Not Magic here at the Painted Porch. We had a lovely conversation, and I think you are very much going to enjoy it. We don't usually have people quite of your height in this studio at this tiny table, but I'm sure that's a problem for you. lot of places. Everywhere I go. The plane on the way here, indeed. Your whole life, I imagine. Were you always tall? Always, well, yeah, I mean, even as a kid, I was massive. I was compared to others.

I didn't know it. It's one of the weird things about being a kid, I suppose, when you are abnormally large, you don't realize it. It's just normal for you. Well, sometimes the other kids make sure you know you're abnormal in some way. Oh, they certainly let you know, but it's, from my perspective, even back then I was enormous and I knew other people thought I was big but then you know

a cuddle with my mom and it was like okay I'm a normal size kid this is what kids are yeah yeah did you sprout up at some point or were you just all no just huge

just from the beginning big baby big toddler big teenager were your parents big my father's Nigerian not known for their height stocky well built

gentleman normally are Nigerians and my mother was I don't know I've got no real concept of her. I know she was much more than me, but 5'9, same height as my sisters. Genetic, look at the draw. But it started for you in a bookstore, right?

You're on your way to a bookstore. That's where your athletic journey begins. Oh, library. Library. Library. We couldn't afford bookstores. So, or at least that's not true. We couldn't afford bookstores at the way, the way I read books.

I think my granddad thought it was wasteful, the idea that I would buy a book that I was going to read in two days. Yes. and then just have as a thing an expensive habit it is and it's a glorious habit i mean i came i went into your bookshop first and you have that fireplace thing that is like this yes and it instantly made me think i mean can i get away with that i live in a flat i don't think i can get away with it but being surrounded by books there is something about it that's chastening i think you're like i i 've read a lot of these but i have so many more left to read that's what i when i look at the shelves of my house, which are not organized like this. This is just art. But I'm proud, but also I got to pick up

the pace. Yeah. For me, it's not even the reading part of it, because I don't assume nowadays in the days of virtual delivery that almost anybody, what people put on their bookshelves behind them is not always a reflection. Sure. Who they are, more who they wish you to see them as. But it's the idea of all these amazing people who have written on these amazing topics. It's chasing me in terms of the knowledge that they have that I can't even conceive of, even if I read their book. Yeah. Like with your book, right, you skim the knowledge of what that person knows and you feel like you've learned a lot by reading the book.

But if you reflect for a second, the person who wrote the book, that's just what they've had time to write down. Sure. That's what they've had time to curate and put into a, but if you really had a conversation with them, your mind would be blown instantly. Yes. It's brilliant. It's not a bad thing.

I just think it's brilliant. And a book is like, you know, kind of like that thing about the iceberg. great where you only see the small fraction. Like I was just, I have a book coming on in October and I, there's a section on Lincoln and I was going to sort of just illustrate it for people. Like, I think I read like six or seven thousand pages on Lincoln. So you stack them there here. And that's like maybe 20 pages in the book. And so obviously experience is a really powerful way to learn and people go, you know, you can't learn everything in books. But if you think about how much experience and knowledge and ideas go into producing a book. I mean, like this book is your life. This is

license you learned over many, many decades, having a number of experiences that most people will never get to have. And then, you know, books are really that sort of distilled down into some form of wisdom. Yeah. It's time and place travel is the bit I like the most. The idea that I was at an event yesterday where I talked about my mom and somebody afterwards said it was like your mom was in the room. She's been, she's been passed away. She's She died when I was in my 20s. Yeah. And there's some part of that where the idea that you can transport an entire group of people,

whether it's one reader or an audience of people listening to, and you can take them to that time back in 1978 when you were about to walk into the cinema and watch Star Wars for the first time or whatever it was. I just think it's incredibly cool to be able to do that. Well, the founding story of Stoicism involves this guy Zeno, who is, as a young man, visits the Temple of Apollo in Delphi, and he gets this problem. And the prophecy says, you know, the secret to a good life is having conversations with the dead. And he doesn't know what this means.

So many years later, he's suffered the shipwreck, and he washes up in Athens. And he's penniless, and he's winding his way through the Athenian Agora, and he passes this bookseller who's selling, you know, these scrolls in the, in the agora. And the bookseller's reading one of the books out loud. It's this story from Socrates. And that's when immediately becomes clear to Zeno. that's what it means to have conversations with the dead. Books are this superpower. You could travel back in time.

You can travel forward in time, as you said. It also allows you to communicate with the wisest, smartest, weirdest, craziest, most evil, most amazing people who have ever lived. And you can argue with them. In the pages of the, you know, the marginalia, you can be inspired by them. You can talk. It's a magical, beautiful, crazy thing. And some people choose not to do it. it. Yeah, I mean, I think I fell into the kind of middle class trap of suggesting that everybody had access to books and everybody knew how to read with the kind of fluency that made the process of reading not an impediment to actually enjoying the contents of a book. But the people I marveled at are exactly the ones you're talking about, the ones who have those skills and have the the finances, but simply look at other people's thoughts in such a way that it's not deemed important enough.

Yes. There is something in my book about this kind of sonic libertarianism idea, this idea that we're in a time where what I say is important because I say it. And more importantly, inherently, what you say is unimportant because I'm not saying it. Yeah. And so there's something about that that appears to me people dismiss books. And there are books, I'm sure that I would enjoy less and books. But the ones I would enjoy less, it's not because they're not high.

brow enough. Somebody asked me the other day, one of my favorite books, and it's the never-ending story. I adore that book. Yeah. I mean, look, there's a lot of books not worth the pages that they're printed on, for sure. It's not that every book is amazing. But yeah, there's this Mark Twain quote about, you know, someone who does not read has no advantage over someone who cannot read. So, yeah, the criticism is not someone who, because of education and circumstances, doesn't have access to books or wasn't given yet the skills to do it. But you talk to people. But you talk to I haven't read a book since high school, or just they'd rather, and look, we're doing a podcast right now, but like podcasts are not a substitute for books. And even though they're both coming

into your ear, if you're doing audiobooks, there is something about taking the time to craft sentences and arguments and sustain, you know, a journey from point A to point B that is in a book that us just riffing on stuff, you know, is not. even close to coming as a substitute for. You can never get to the depth that you might do in an individual. And you don't, as much as we might like to think we can, we never curate ourselves in this kind of environment in a way that it's designed for the person listening or reading to really get it in the easiest possible way.

Because this, I mean, because of the nature of it, we're talking to each other for each other to get each other. And other people might enjoy that, but they'll miss bits of it because it's not about them getting that necessarily. And I think in books, I really, well, in mine anyway, I'm really thinking about, I think this is important. And I think it's an important thing for other people, not just as a kind of, I don't know, intellectual, fun thing for me. Yeah. But because I think it'll be helpful, how can I say this in a way that will make other people get that?

Yes. Like, I think what drew me to being a writer was, like, trying to explain things to my parents or teachers or friends and being like, you know what? I'm going to go in my room and I'm going to figure this out. Like it's a deeper impulse than just saying what you think, like the Hemingway thing about, you know, you just sit down at a typewriter and bleed. Maybe that creates sort of some interesting art, but that's not the same. That's not the muscle of writing, which is this kind of craft. I have actually a story in the book that I just finished where in the early days of World War II, Marshall calls Eisenhower, is then just this young officer into his office.

goes, you know, basically here's the situation. You know, the Japanese of Bomb Pearl Harbor, World War II has commenced. He's like, what do you think we should do? And, you know, the other people he called into his office and asked this question to, which would be like, sir, here's what I think we should do. And they would just sort of riff this answer. And Eisenhower is the only one who goes, sir, can I have a few hours? And Marshall says, sure.

And then he requisitions a typewriter and some paper. and he spends the next three or four hours typing out a memo of a sort of a strategic plan. Wow. And this is, I think, the illustration of his genius is that he's not someone who just pulls something out of his house. He's like, let me put this to paper and think about it. And you've got to imagine he's typing a couple different drafts. He's editing. He's thinking.

And that process of writing as a way to figure out what you think and to perfect what you thing. That's really what it is. And that, again, I think we, like most of the great speakers, Churchill being one, you know, we think of them as these improvisers. And it's like, all of this was practice and iterated. It's a, it's a difficult thing you have to do. Yeah. That practice, that iteration, that willingness to look at something and say, that is crap, that is terrible. I know I had good intentions for what I was trying to say there, but that's bad. And it's bad for like five different reasons that I can now see. three hours after writing it or a day later when I revisit it.

I mean, I was going to ask you, do you enjoy writing books? Because I do not enjoy writing books. They say a writer is someone to whom writing does not come easy. And then the other expression is painters like painting, writers like having written. I'm of two minds, though. On the one hand, writing is painful and difficult, and I like being done. I also love it. It's probably maybe like you probably experienced as an athlete where you both love it and can't not do it.

And it's also excruciating because, one, it's physically difficult, but two, you're really hard on yourself. Yeah, I mean, I liked, in the athletic context, I liked winning. I like being personally successful. And I had to kind of, I didn't quite. It's probably not that way most of the time. I didn't express those that I was enjoying doing personally well, even when we were. lost, right? But the practice that led to that felt like this is something where I just have to put focus and effort in and liking it or not liking it's not relevant because that thing over

there is the thing that's important. There will be a game and in basketball, in the NBA it's three times a week, right? At least, there'll be a game shortly. This thing that I'm doing, these sprints that I'm running that I definitely hate because sweating is not one of the things I've ever enjoyed, these drills that are so dull. This coach who's so pedantic, that he's coming over to me and touching my elbow by a millimeter. Yeah. All of this, this is incredibly dull. But I can either indulge myself in the dullness of it

or just recognize how it's not a red thread. There was a great big fiber optic cord that leads from this thing to me being able to not get my ass kicked. Yeah. Next week. And that was it for me. Book writing is a little bit different in that I really like what I write sometimes. I often, I was reading the audiobook at the,

for the last four or five days. That's an excruciating experience, isn't it? It's... I did it right here at this table. Oh, my God. I did it in this tiny little booth where my shoulders belly fit in it. It was so hot.

I was just sweating with an iPad in front of me. And it made me feel so incompetent to read. You're like, do I know how to read? And I'm not sure I know how to write either. I hate this. I keep on coming to parts. I'm saying, why do I write like this? I think there's probably a clip of outtakes

from the three days it's taking. me to do this. Why do I write like this? And I love the way it sounds when you read it. It's wonderful alliteration. And then when you read it out loud, it's like, this is awful. Yeah. And you could spare yourself that experience by doing it out loud at some point earlier in the process, but then you'd have to undergo the excruciating experience then. And I think I exhaust my publisher because I then send a huge stack of edits from the audiobook. They're like, you can't keep doing it. And I go, I just said it all out loud. And there's something like, You notice, hey, I said the word obviously four times on this page.

And I wouldn't have noticed that. This is it. You know, because, well, first off, when I wrote it, the pages weren't so small. You know, like you're, you're just see every step of the way you're seeing it. Now you're holding it to another standard. Yeah. I know for a fact that I use the word context in this book. Too many times.

I had no clue of it until I read this. And at some point on day one, I had this creeping suspicion and like, oh my God. There's a lot more context to come. Did I not have a, I mean, did I not have a thesaurus here? Yeah, right. Oh, my God. Yeah. You realize, oh, I've never heard this word before and I used it confidently.

And now I have to figure out how it's pronounced or I'm going to sound like, although now, I will say, because I've been doing audiobooks for 10 years plus, I now go, you know what, you can fix that in AI. And they can now come in, like I don't do any difficult pronunciations because AI is good enough. that it can help you do, like, it couldn't do a whole sentence that might sound weird. But if there's some big French word, I'm like, I'm not embarrassing myself with that. So my audio tech was a lovely bloke. I'm clearly going to the wrong places because I had pickups for all kinds of stuff. And doing pickups without context. That's harder too.

Because now you don't know where to emphasize. I don't know where. So, but that's what I, I didn't know there was an AI opportunity for it. You were talking about the words that you use. I, since I was a kid, I did this thing. where I would pick a dictionary up and just pick a word. I'm like, what's that word? The first time I did in college with my academic advisor,

who I used to just hide in her office sometimes, she was one of the few people who didn't see me as an athlete. It was really cool, right? It's just fun to be a student in a place. And I would pick up a, and soft history was the first one, I think. Was it sophistry or was it syllogism? Syllogism was the first word. And so ever since then, there are a ton of words now that I know,

and I know that I'm using them in the right way in a sentence, but if you asked me to divine them, I couldn't. Yes. And so the book, when I read the book, I'm like, oh, like I know that's right, but now I'm saying it instead of writing it doesn't feel as right anymore. Yeah. It's a weird, surreal, excruciating experience to do it. And then you're just like, am I bored with my own writing or am I just bored from reading out loud?

You know, because it's not a thing. You would never sit down and read a book out loud. anyone, but I don't know. We were just at a dinner with some friends, and they were talking about their sort of pre-game partying routine now that they're a little older. And one of them was saying that they take actually today's sponsor, pre-alcohol. Zbiotics pre-alcohol probiotic drink is the world's first genetically engineered probiotic, invented by Ph.D. scientists to help you tackle rough mornings after drinking.

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slash Daily Stoke. Just go to Indeed.com slash Daily Stoke right now and support the show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast, Indeed.com slash daily Stoic. Terms and conditions apply. Indeed is all you need. So when you start playing basketball, did you love it or did you love that you were good at it? Neither, because I was not good at it. Clearly you were pretty good. When I first started. Yeah. Awful. And even in terms of the NBA, whilst I'm better than unless you've got like some of your former guests like Kansas watching this. this episode, I am better than most people who call themselves people who play basketball.

But I was very average in the scheme of the NBA. Sure. But the reason I played was because I went to my first training session in a gym in Manchester, near Manchester, and I walked in the room and these strangers, they ran towards me, they grabbed me by the arm, they're like, this guy's on our team. I felt really embarrassed because I'd never picked her. I'd never touched the basketball, so I didn't know what I was doing. But I remember that feeling.

It was so utterly intoxicating. I was like, I'm never, I remember saying to myself after the end of this practice where I think made one basket, missed many. And I was like, I'm never leaving this space. And I didn't mean that gym. And I meant this feeling I'm never leaving. Like team sports, basically. But this type of, I didn't, and again, I wasn't, I'm not a sports fan now.

So you could ask me, I'm an MBA ambassador, do a lot of work in Europe and Africa, I live in England. And so when I'm asked to do stuff about that, I get the NBA League pass and I do a 10-minute crawl through the games to find out what's going on. Otherwise, I couldn't tell you who's on which team. But that space felt so good.

And then as a, what was it, 16, 17-year-old, my idea of America was formed only of the TV shows. Right. So A-Team Night Rider. So I had this sense that it never reigned in America. that it was always sunshiny in America. And I thought, what if I could have this feeling in a place where it never rains?

But it's all Santa Monica or something? That was, yeah, because it's all the filming studios, right? So, you know, that was the sophistication of the thinking. This feels amazing. These people can see my potential. They're interested in me as a person. They care. And I could do it where it doesn't rain so much.

Right. And so I told them we had a 45-minute practice. I arrived a little late. And I told them 45 minutes in. they were talking about the NBA. I was like, what's the NBA? I was like, where the best people in the world players, like, yeah, I'll do that. Yeah.

That was it. And obviously basketball would have been in a weird point at that time. I mean, it's still becoming this sort of global game that it was. And then, as I understand it, I know for Europe, but maybe in the UK, like high school sports and college sports are just not the same thing that they are here. There's not the system where you go from one to the other to the pros. It's entirely right. Yeah.

So in America, it is a factory, right? Yeah. It is a professional sport starts in high school, I think. Yeah. People are really objective about it. And in fact, my high school coach, when I came to this country, Toledo, Ohio, a guy called, that was also. Very far from Santa Monica. That was also a surprise to me, I will admit.

I didn't realize that Americans didn't speak English when I arrived in Toledo, Ohio. I couldn't understand anything in him was saying. But he gave me this advice, and it was really brilliant. And he said, I told him my ambition, told him what I was here to do, which is to get a scholarship, that's the next stage. And he said, just remember to have fun this year, to really enjoy playing basketball this year because it'd be the last time you play basketball for fun. Wow. He said it won't be the last time you have fun playing basketball, but it will be the last time you play basketball for fun. Sure.

And I thought it was just a remarkable reflection of the reality of college sports, which is you can see them celebrating. You can see athletes having fun in practice together, but they do not play for fun. No, they're playing for their future. They're playing for a renewable one-year scholarship that people don't realize as a renewable one-year scholarship. And they're playing in order to not have massive student debt. And they're playing for some of them to facilitate them being in university at all. It's the only way they could be.

And they're playing for some of them because if they weren't doing that, they wouldn't be eating properly. Right. And so there's all kinds of other things that mean playing basketball is a job, a real job, even before this new system came into play. Well, it's funny because we were talking about, you know, do you enjoy writing? And the athletes that I've talked to, I'm the one thing they, and it actually changed how I think about it is like all of them at some point in their career, maybe right before it ends, but then definitely after it ends, they look back and they wish they'd enjoyed it more because they did. They got to play a game for a living, and then suddenly it goes away. They took it so seriously, winning and losing felt so monumental, and then all of a sudden

you don't get to do it anymore, and it's like this dream, and you don't remember having any fun when you got to do your dream. Yeah, I mean, I remember successes, and I remember fun with colleagues, with teammates. But I think I had an advantage the whole time against my colleagues. And indeed, against the narrative of people in sports, which is that I was never a basketball player or basketball, as English people would say. And I'm always frustrated by people who think I am. You know, you probably got a document that my team sends around all the time that says, this is how you can describe me and in this order. Yeah.

And if anything has to go, it's the basketball bit that goes. It wasn't part of your identity as a person. My occupation was not my definition. I think it's the most dangerous thing. If you look at, we do some work with some of the professional sports teams in Europe and in America. And if you look at the pain points of transition, it is oftentimes not just that they didn't save well or they didn't, whatever, or they don't have a skill deficit of some kind of the real world. It's the fact that they've gone from being, they knowing who they were because it was what they did to the next day, not. Yes.

And what a devastating impact on your ego, on your sense of self to be, you know, and it can only last so long that you walk through an airport terminal. People are like, hey, great, you know, you played a great game last week, last month, last year, 1990. Yeah, yeah. And at some point, people just stop. Right, who was on the All-Star team nine years ago? Right. It fades pretty quickly. Very quickly. Yeah. And if you are a player of my caliber, then people are like, oh, you're tall, you must have played basketball, and that's the best you get, right? It's the best you get. Occasionally you get a Penn State fan because there's enough alumni out there.

We'll be like, oh, you played at Penn State. And I met somebody yesterday in Oxford who went to Penn State the year before me, which is crazy. Yeah. Our alumni are everywhere, apparently. But that's it. So if you're defined by that moment, especially I was thinking about it as I looked at myself in the mirror this morning, and I was like, if you define, because it's a lot more than just your kind of intellectual and cognitive. identity. You know, you look at you in the mirror and it's like, I don't look like I looked when I played basketball. And even that feels like a bit of a betrayal. If you're not careful,

if you don't allow your mind to really say, it's okay. I'm 55, nearly 56 years old. It's not, it's not abnormal. I mean, I'm not wildly obese. I'm just, I just don't have 4% body fat anymore, which is okay. It's normal for humans. Yeah. And I think the Stoics would say it's a dangerous thing to stake your identity on something that you don't control. So if your identity is like, I'm an athlete, meaning I do athletic things, well, that's largely in your control. I mean, you know, you can get in an accident and then the kinds of sports you can do might change. But if your identity is NBA player, at best, you're going to retire at some point and not be able to do it anymore. But you could get cut tomorrow. You could apply your knee tomorrow. You could be replaced by

someone better tomorrow? Yeah, I think about it's like, is my identity as a writer or is it author? Because writer is something I always get to do, because I can do it in a journal, but author is more like, are they letting me publish books and how are those books? And certainly if your identity is best-selling author or, you know, NBA starter, you know, the more your identity is tied to the things that other people have significant or complete say over, the more vulnerable you are to those crushing changes in transitions. Yeah, there's a process versus outcome part, right? Where you're talking about writer. Even then, I hadn't thought about that. And because I think of myself, even as I often tell people, don't let your occupation be your definition. I just can't

imagine not being a psychologist. It's so, it's so thrilling. It's so thrilling. And I know it feels, I'm sure, to other people, it's like, really. And also, The credibility of it is low, rawly, because people are like, oh, you talk for a living, great. Yeah. You went to school, you got a PhD, and now you just talk to people. But there is something about it, the access you get to people's lives, the credibility that you can quickly build with people that allows them to share stuff with you. And you just sit there as a reflective entity saying, it's really interesting you said that. Last week you said something quite different to that, which one, how do we reconcile those things?

And to me, it's so exciting the idea that in, you know, 10 months time working with, with, with, with, you know, Especially because I get to work with very cool people at the peak of their careers often. But even those people who are just starting out, it's just incredibly exciting to know there's just listening and picking up important but not necessarily like wildly blaring, flashy light types of things. Yeah. Reflecting them back can make people grab it and go, just go. Amazing. Yeah, when you have that thing that you love and then what is the root sort of verbal? of the thing, that's what you want to attach your identity to you because that's more or less what you always get to keep doing as opposed to the noun like, you know, I'm the team psychologist for these people or I'm the, you know, number one expert on this. Those are, those are status-related,

selection-related, gate-kept things. And while you have them, they're nice. But you've got to create some kind of distance to them because they can go away. Yeah, and really know what underpins them. What is the thing about you that really makes those things work? Because there are lots of people who are psychologists, lots of people who are writers or authors rather. And so what is it that makes your particular thing so valuable to you? Right. It's not just the book at the end. It must be something else. Yes. I like the impact the book have. I'm sure you've had that experience. to when you talk to people and I'm not very good. Reading the audiobook remind me that I write something and instantly forget it.

One of my team said this quote. She said, can we use this quote in this session that we're doing? I wasn't a part of it. It's like, that's an amazing quote. You should absolutely use that. Who did that? And she just looked at me because I think she thought I was fishing. I wasn't fishing.

No idea from the new book. From the new book. Well, you can't memorize all this. that is the lovely part of the process. It's like you are chipping at it day after day and cumulatively it's something. But there was never one point where you had it all in your head and you were dictating it out.

That would be, that would signify a very simplistic or not that rigorous of a thing. It's the individual sentences that add up cumulatively to the thing as a whole. Yeah, but there were points when I was reading it. And I was like, that had to stop that the audio tech was like, no, stop, do that again. And it was because I was super self-satisfied. I was reading it.

I was like, that was a really clever. I like it. That's a great sentence. That's a great sentence. But it doesn't, obviously, when you read it with that kind of joy in your voice, it doesn't come across, right? This episode is sponsored by Dell. And let me tell you, huge savings on Dell AI PCs. are here, and it's a big deal.

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Upgrade your AIPC today by visiting dell.com slash deals. That's dell.com slash deals. I'm fascinated by the story about you staying with the magic. And I think I'm fascinated by it because, and probably you hear people ask you about it a lot, I think the reason it sticks out to people is it's just, just not how people do business. You know, so walk me through what it was and what happened. So I played with the Allende Magic for a year.

I did, I think, to most people's ideas, surprisingly well. And started and ended up with the interest of 17 teams. I had a home in Scottsdale at the time. That's where I stayed in the offseason because it was just far away from where I played until I went to Utah. And I was getting these jerseys with my, my name on the back sent from various teams. I think I've still got the one from the Knicks

and I've got one from somewhere else. And so this is incredibly flattering. Feels great. But I also remembered a year, almost exactly a year before when my agent and I had been, I had been calling teams, myself, begging them to allow me to come to their summer league team. You just wanted a shot.

Will you let me come to your summer league team? I remember I never got to an executive of any consequence, But I was just talking to random people in the front offices, people that my agent had names for and numbers for. And some were polite, few were warm. Yeah. Most were immensely transactional and slightly confused by perhaps the audacity on one hand, but also on the kind of what, if you don't know you, if we don't know you, you're no good was definitely the implication. Yeah. So what was the name again?

Yeah, we don't know you. You definitely know good. If you were good, we'd know you. Yeah, we wouldn't be calling. Right. We'd be calling you. We'd be calling you, right? And I remembered that in contrast, and Doc gave me an opportunity that I took full advantage of. And I was fully aware that I was working for a business and a business that would have no problem ejecting me the next year. But my mother told me a long time ago that you can't be a part-time person of principle. In the context of me, you can't be a part-time man of principle. And I say certain things are important. And it's not about loyalty because I don't really believe in it as a thing. It feels a bit quid pro quo. But this was about me and what I thought was the thing that was most resonant with who I am. And the thing that was most resonant was saying, I'm going to take a ridiculously small in the context of the other opportunity, amount of money to stay with a team and more importantly stay with a coach

that had given me the opportunity in the first place because that felt resonant with who I am. It felt like that was aligned with my principles. And I knew that there was a good chance that their front office at the earliest opportunity, whether it was Tim Duncan or some other bloke, would come along and kick me out of the team so far and so fast. Yeah. Right? I knew that was a possibility.

But I said, I did it anyway. And it really wasn't about anybody else than just me. I knew it was a bad idea financially. And I knew that... How bad of an idea? Oh, it's incredibly bad idea. Anybody listening, if you're offered $17 million. You should take that money, unless it's for murdering.

You offered $70 million to change. To change your organization, right? Yeah, yeah, you should probably do that, especially if the figure that you were getting paid before was like $286,000. Yeah. You should probably go. I would advise that for other people.

It's worked out pretty well for me. I now work with people. And on one side, I work with people who are doing well and transitioning and trying to do remarkable things. Other people are trying to grab their organization and change their opportunity, right? but I also work with people in the most vulnerable moments who come to me because that usually recommended and they'll say, you know, I don't know how I can, if I can trust you and how much is

your word worth. And there's very few people who can say, well, around $17 million is a starting point, right? And so for me, it works really well because being centered around my principles is one of the reasons that people find me as polarizing as I know I am. as a human being, in the context of my work, people find me grounded and easy to trust. I think we want to believe that the world is just, that karma exists. So what I'd want to hear is the conclusion of this story is that, you know, you stayed and then you got a huge payday from the magic, or it didn't end up mattering because, you know, you added up the contracts

from after, the different teams you played with over the years, or that they stayed loyal to you forever or that in the end it was a wash financially that you know you didn't actually lose 17 million dollars but how does the story the story end no i mean i i lost a significant amount of money i went to the utah jazz who did not pay me 17 million dollars but it doesn't end there because my career certainly didn't end there i moved on and i'm now a psychologist i work in academia i've got a consultancy, and at least some small part, although fascinatingly, most of the people I work with, even the Americans, don't know that I ever play basketball. Yeah.

There is something about the fact that our principles are setting us apart in the way we work with organizations and individuals, and that's from unitive. That pays good money. And so I don't think I thought or intended it would, but it was just about what's the decision that feels most me. I think we saw this with Rory McElroy, who decided. not to take the live golf money. So like several hundred million dollars, basically.

And then he stayed loyal to the league. And then like sort of what happens, right? Like first off, his actual game suffers because he's like taking golf is such a finely tuned mental balance, like thinking of anything but golf for one second. And you start to. So his game goes temporarily in the jitter. And then he stays loyal to the league that brought him. what he thought was the best version of it, and then what does the league do, basically sells out to

the people that he turned down the money from. I think we want to think, like, hey, if you stay loyal, if you do the right thing, it not just doesn't have a negative consequence. There's some reward for it. And I think that's probably the wrong bill of goods to sell people because you do that one time and it doesn't work out. You become jaded and cynical. I think what you're saying, is, no, you do the right thing because it's the right thing, because you have to live as that person, not only will probably not pay off, but like you may get fucked. Oh, yeah, absolutely. You can absolutely end up getting shafted. I remember vividly sitting in an office in Scottsdale, a law practice, a meeting with Vanderway, I think his name was, one of the GMs and a couple

and other people from The Magic, walking in, they said, sit down, instantly told me, don't forget they've been talking about the next year's contract and how it'd be seven years and it wouldn't be a max, but it would be a lot. And I remember sitting there and it was 10 seconds into the conversation, we're not signing you next year. It was over. It was done with them. Yeah. In game theory, they call this the suckers payoff. Right. And here I am sat in my hometown at the time being told this news and knowing that now I have to scramble to find a team that'll take me. There was one that I thought might. There were two that I thought might. And one of them was a preferred option and one of them was a less preferred option for numerous reasons. And I ended up

in a situation that I knew would be bad for me interpersonally and personally. But I'm a humanistic psychologist. And so much of what we learn in humanistic psychology is the idea of congruence. The gap between what ought to be and what is, what is promised and what you get, the experience that you'd like and the experience that you're given is pain. It's always pain. One description, and it might end up being pain that has you lash out or just pain that causes you pain, but it's pain. And so doing things that are aligned, you talked about doing the right thing, which I don't use that terminology because I find that people can manipulate it to mean whatever they want it to me in any moment, but doing things that are actually aligned.

to the principles that you've really examined. Of course, you can't do this if you have an under-examined life. Sure. If you can do the things that are aligned to your principles, whatever happens to you externally, and you mentioned stoicism focusing on things you can control, at least there, there is this sense of groundedness, security in the idea that I am aligned to the things that I say that I stand for.

And that's what I had to take from it. I am asked about this every week. somebody in a public environment at a Q&A for something that's nothing. I was talking about psychological safety the other day and some bloke said

what about... Do you wish you took the 17 million? I said to the guy who asked actually last week thank you for bringing up that extraordinarily painful memory because there is a part of it that is painful

even as when I think about it it feels quite assuring. It's like yes, I had examined my life not as fully as I have now but I did know that some things were important to me and even when

dangled an opportunity that I knew would give me with no effort. Had I been injured on day one as a Laker, I'd have four championships. Yeah. Right? Four championship rings. And those things are nice, right? But I knew that in that moment I stayed aligned to who I was. Yeah. And I've refined that a little bit over time. And now I can make decisions that are aligned to that, always knowing that even when the alternative seems incredible, there is something worthwhile about doing the thing that's aligned to who you know you are. What's like, look, not cheating in relationships isn't going to prevent you from ever being cheated on.

At the same time, the fact that someone might cheat on you is not a good reason for you to be a cheater. Again, what part you control. You control whether you're a person of integrity, whether you're a person who keeps their word, whether you're honest, whether you're loyal, whether you value things over my. money, you also have to be sort of mentally and spiritually aware that that's not really the norm. Yes, the integrity word. That was the word I was searching for as I was trying to talk before. That's the piece. There is great resilience, personal safety in integrity. And having in a way

that is internal rather than those people who perform it. But there is something really powerful about it. And despite the fact that I remember that meeting, I remember crying in that meeting. I cried as I was in the meeting. And then I cried as I ran out. And I got to my very, very hot car. And I sat in my very hot car without putting the air conditioning on it and cried in the middle of the summer in Arizona. And that's what it was. It was screaming.

My mind was telling me what an absolute idiot I was. And yet at the same time, I had predicted this. I knew it was a possibility. I knew the characters. Well, we'd like to live in a world where that's the norm. And a lot of times it is. I mean, I think people are mostly good and often do the right thing or, you know, the integrity thing. But then they don't.

And they usually tell themselves they have their reasons. And sometimes they do have their reasons. But it's always disappointing and can be kind of soul crushing. If your default view of the world is that like integrity is important and it's worth more than money, it can kind of set you up for. I think this is why cynics, they say, are often like. sort of idealists who've been burned. Yeah. It's like you had this view and then you found out it was not a shared view. Yeah. I think people think I'm cynical, but I'm a skeptic in the kind of behavioral science sense

of that word. I'm a skeptic, but not a cynic, but I do, I'm not sure I think that people are broadly good. I meet a lot of people as a, as a, as a, you hear their private thoughts. As a psychologist, and I do hear their thoughts, and this doesn't mean that I think people are bad either. It's just that without using a kind of banal neutral, there is something else. And I think there's something else is, I'd be interested to know how this fits, or if it fits with Stoicism at all. But this idea that when I look at organizations, when I look at individuals and organizations, the consistent theme that you can see is how people will choose comfort, or at least the, avoidance of discomfort over organizational performance, integrity, something better, right? They will choose that because there's a very small world for many people that is just about

does this feel bad today. And what's interesting about it is contextual too, because that's usually not the same as that executive who chooses that for sure when they don't give feedback. They would really help a colleague, but they just choose not to because it would feel a bit squarely to do it. Yeah. But that's the same executive that will come in the next day and be talking about, my arms are so sore, you know, they've got the delayed onset muscle.

So they really, they seek out the discomfort because they recognize it as a proponent of growth. Yes. Component of growth, sorry. And yet in other dimensions, I think the interpersonal dimensions, people will choose. Where will we challenge ourselves? It's easier to challenge ourselves physically than to get out of our comfort zone, either to stand up, you know, and speak in front of public, or to say something,

controversial or take a political stand or whatever. Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us and it would really help the show. We appreciate it. And I'll see you next episode. Thank you.